Devil quoting scripture

While other parties have resisted this when they have formed state governments, they have changed their outlook as soon as they have got hold of even partial power at the Centre. The Janata Party’s record in office mirrored the Congress’s, and if the United Front did not exercise similar arbitrariness it was due more to political inability than lack of desire.The BJP has never accepted federalism as the basis of the polity. Today, in control of government at the Centre, albeit with the crutch of regional partners, it shows wanton disregard for Article I of the Constitution.

Federalism does not only mean distributing revenues according to Finance-Commission formulae. It means respect for the rights of democratically-installed state governments who enjoy the people’s mandate as much as the Union government. As long as they work according to the respective lists laid down in the Constitution and treat each other with respect, there shouldbe no problem.

The matter gets complicated by differing political perspectives and because the Centre has encroached on the rights and even the duties of state governments. Take law and order. This clearly falls within the ambit of the states. Yet many law-enforcing agencies and the para-military forces are under the Centre’s control. It is this superior fire power that makes the Central government arrogant. The BJP, for instance, would be loath to accept Mao’s dictum that political power grows out of the barrel of the gun.

Yet when its spokesmen, Venkaiah Naidu for one, talk about the dependence of the states on central forces, they imply that might makes right in Centre-state relations. The problem gets intensified because of narrow partisan attitudes even in the context of the fractured polity that obtains currently. Take the amazing dissimulation by the home minister and others on Article 355. That provision does allow a certain role for the Centre in the event of “internal disturbances”. Now theirdefinition is used in a partisan, disingenuous and self-serving way. The “internal disturbances” in West Bengal are in no way more serious than, say, in Uttar Pradesh.

Yet since West Bengal’s Left Front government, repeatedly endorsed by the people, is seen by the BJP as its “enemy” whereas the UP government, kept in office by legislative sharp practice, is its “own”, it is to West Bengal that the home minister the wannabe Sardar Patel sends fact-finding missions. When these bureaucratic inspectors get a fitting rebuff, the Constitution is invoked, much in the manner of the devil quoting the scriptures.

It is not that the situation in West Bengal is perfect; far from it. And it is perfectly legitimate for political parties and formations there, including the mercurial Mamata Bannerjee, to draw public attention to it and agitate about it. But the Centre definitely does not have a role and this elementary aspect of federalism needs reiteration.

There are many elements in the prevailing processwhich can only be characterised as “polities by proxy”. Like a sulking brat unable to face his peers who summons his father to help him out, Mamata Bannerjee’s failure to tackle the Left Front in the panchayat polls has her crying for her elders and betters to intervene. Eager to please their petulant protege, the BJP leaders at the Centre are perfectly willing to subvert the Constitution.

Only a few months ago the BJP rightly protested against the undemocratic acts of the UP governor and then Central government vis-a-vis the Kalyan Singh ministry. Today, the boot is on the other leg and what is sauce for the Kalyan Singh goose is apparently not sauce for the Jyoti Basu gander.The reason for focusing on West Bengal and not Bihar or Tamil Nadu is that the former starkly illustrates the outrageousness of the BJP-led government.

However, it is clear in all three cases that the home ministry’s activism is due not to its realisation of its statutory responsibilities but meant to play along with its partnerswho are apt to throw tantrums.

In any event, the tottering central government is unable to discharge its primary responsibilities on finance, defence and foreign affairs. The Budget and post-Budget fiasco and continuing terrorist outrages are proof, as is the dismal corner into which it has painted India in international relations. Meanwhile, because of its internal weaknesses, the BJP lets its allies raise the political temperature. The spectre of the Chandigarh dispute is being resurrected by the Akali Dal and the AIADMK is fanning the Cauvery problem. Sangh parivar luminaries appear to have freedom to talk with a forked tongue on Ayodhya and heat up the communal situation.

All that this amounts to is a weak Centre vis-a-vis its allies and a tough-talking union vis-a-vis the states. This is a recipe for a federal disaster. In the last several years there was a distinct possibility of a true federalism consolidating itself. The voters put different parties in power in different states and created asituation for the Centre to moderate its arrogance. That process has been affected. The tragedy is that this is due not to the BJP’s attempt to convince the people of the rightness of its unitary view but to its manipulative realpolitik, its eagerness to stick to power through a weak and internally contradictory coalition combined, of course, with its antediluvian ideology of authoritarian centralism.